Somalia: United Nations declared Famine in Somalia

Somalia regions like southern Bakool and lower shabelle has been declared as the famine inflicted regions and appealed for 300 million dollars help. According to UN Humanitarian Coordinator for Somalia, Mark Bowden, the people are in urgent need of humanitarian assistance.

“If humanitarian agencies do not intervene now, famine will spread to all eight regions of southern Somalia within two months, due to poor harvests and infectious disease outbreaks,” Bowden warned.

As per Bowden there are around 310, 000 acutely malnourished children in southern Somalia who need urgent help. Consecutive droughts and the ongoing conflicts have affected the country in the last few years has made it extremely difficult for agencies to operate and access communities in the south of the country. Somalia is the country worst affected by a severe drought that has ravaged large swaths of the Horn of Africa, leaving an estimated 11 million people in the region in need of humanitarian assistance.

UN agencies have asked for 1.6 billion dollars to pay for essential programmes in the Horn of Africa, but have only received half that amount. Kenya, Somalia, Ethiopia and Djibouti are all facing a crisis that is being called the worst in 50 years.

As per the Amnesty International’s new report war crimes affecting Somali children, including the recruitment of child soldiers under 15 by armed Islamist groups.In the line of fire: Somalia’s children under attack reveal the full impact on children of the on-going armed conflict.

“Somalia is not only a humanitarian crisis: it is a human rights crisis and a children’s crisis,” said Michelle Kagari, Amnesty International’s Deputy Director for Africa.

“The humanitarian crisis facing children in Somalia is also the result of al-Shabab denying access to aid in the last couple of years.”

Al-Shabab, the main armed group opposed to the government, has imposed severe restrictions on the right to education, preventing some girls from attending school, banning certain subjects from being taught, or using schools to indoctrinate children into participating in fighting.

There is a high level of trauma among Somali refugees, including children, as a result of the human rights abuses they experienced or witnessed during the conflict.

The international community must expand specific protection measures for the rising number of Somali children separated from their families, and increase psychosocial support and education programs for Somali children.

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